


Better Safe Than Sorry

by glitteringconstellations



Series: Whump Bingo [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Lance (Voltron) Whump, Lance takes one for the team, Poisoning, or one for Shiro specifically
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-22 10:32:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14306793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteringconstellations/pseuds/glitteringconstellations
Summary: Okay, so, maybe he shouldn’t have drank that glass of... whatever it was.Lance really didn’t know what possessed him to do it. A gut feeling, perhaps, or some other instinct screaming at the back of his mindwrong, wrong, so very w r o n gas the glass had been handed to Shiro.Better safe than sorry, right? Better him than anyone else.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for whump bingo, slot O3: Trying to be subtle while leaning against objects to stay upright. Again, took the prompt and ran with it. Poor Lance.

Okay, so, maybe he shouldn’t have drank that glass of... whatever it was. 

Lance really didn’t know what possessed him to do it. A gut feeling, perhaps, or some other instinct screaming at the back of his mind _wrong, wrong, so very w r o n g_ as the glass had been handed to Shiro. Their fearless leader, who always preached to them to never ingest anything they were given until they were sure of its effects on them, had accepted the glass out of propriety more than anything else. Maybe it was the intense look their host cast Shiro when he thought no one was looking, the way he insisted Shiro drink up. 

So he’d quickly snatched the glass from Shiro, pressing his own insistently into Shiro’s other hand until he gripped it. “I don’t like mine, Shiro, can we trade?” he muttered, just loud enough for Shiro to hear and not offend their host. And then he downed the whole glass in one shot before Shiro could protest. It tasted of cinnamon and cardamom and faintly of almonds.

He felt silly, then, especially when Shiro leveled him with a _are you kidding me, Lance, really?_ type look. Especially when the others followed Allura’s lead, drinking from their glasses demurely, and seemed to be fine. Oh well, he thought, maybe it was just him letting his imagination get the better of him. He’d rather make a fool of himself than let anything happen to them. Better safe than sorry, right? Better him than anyone else. 

But as the alliance negotiations dragged on, he felt that feeling of _wrong_ magnify. 

It started with a dull throb in his head, quick bursts of vertigo when he turned his head too quickly to follow the volley of dialogue that bounced about the room. His fingers tightened around the empty glass, thinking that he was just tired. They were going on their eighth varga here, after all.

Yeah, just tired, he thought, when he started feeling his eyes droop and his chin sag. He wasn’t really contributing much to the conversation, anyway. Maybe if he just rested his eyes, he’d be fine. He propped his head up on his hand, elbow on the table as casually as he could muster, hoping that he looked like he was intently interested in whatever was going on.

If intently interested meant dozing like a schoolboy in first period, in any case.

“Lance!” Pidge hissed from his other side, nudging him sharply in the ribs. “Are you paying attention?”

“What? Yeah, of course,” Lance said, snapping his eyes open and sitting up straighter.

“This is important,” Pidge continued under her breath. “We can’t afford to lose these guys as allies. I know it’s dry stuff, but can you please at least _try_ not to act like you’re bored to tears?” 

“Aye, aye, Cap’n,” Lance whispered back with a wink. He smirked when Pidge rolled her eyes at him and turned back to the negotiations. His eyes still felt heavy, but he tried harder to stay focused on the task at hand. 

Honest, he tried.

But the strength to even sit upright seemed to seep from him quicker and quicker with each passing minute. He leaned heavier against the table, the edge of it digging into his ribs where the armor didn’t cover. Warmth burned up his cheeks, down his neck and all over, and his chest felt tight, like his armor was suddenly squeezing him in a vice grip that made it hard to draw in more than shallow breaths. The thrum of his racing heart against his sternum _hurt_ , like it might actually beat a hole right through him.

Something wasn’t right.

A quick glance to either side—good, Shiro and Pidge were both focused on whatever point Allura had just brought up—and Lance brought his glass to his nose and gave it a subtle whiff. The last dregs swirling around in the bottom smelled just like they tasted, of spicy cinnamon and sweet cardamom and bitter almond.

His eyes widened, staring at the glass like it might jump up and bite him. Bitter almond. He knew certain chemicals from Earth existed out in the vast universe. If this smell was any indication, he’d just drank a glassful of cyanide.

He’d be dead before the hour was up if he didn’t do something.

The glass clattered to the ground as he jumped to his feet, slamming his hands on the table as he directed a glare at their host. All heads snapped to face him, expressions ranging from bewildered to concerned to vaguely threatening. 

So much for subtlety.

“Lance, what in heaven’s name—”

He opened his mouth to demand an explanation, to ask them _why did you poison Shiro’s drink?!_ But he could drudge up no words. Instead, all that came out was a choked gurgle as his vision swam from standing too quickly. He swayed once, twice, before collapsing sideways, Shiro’s quick reaction the only thing keeping him from bashing his head against the table.

“ _Lance!?_ ”

Gasping and desperate for air, Lance tried to gesture to the cup where it lay on the floor beside where he and Shiro had sunk to the ground. But his limbs weren’t cooperating; in fact, they were twitching and spastic, and distantly he recognized that he was seizing. His breaths rattled out of him, and darkness edged in from the corners of his eyes. Someone must have figured it out, though, because as the roar of his rapid pulse in his ears grew to a crescendo, he heard angry shouting.

His last thought, as he felt himself be lifted, his head lolling as the darkness consumed him, was _better safe than sorry._


	2. Chapter 2

Lance was dying.

Shiro couldn’t believe it. One minute, he was sitting there fine, following along with the negotiations with the Keemani, same as the rest of them. The next, Shiro found himself on the ground with an armful of Lance before he could fully comprehend what happened.

“ _Lance?!_ ”

Concern quickly turned to outright horror when Lance began to seize, his eyes rolling to the back of his head. Terrible, raspy gurgles tore from his throat as he struggled for air, and Shiro scrambled to cradle his head to keep it from smashing against the floor as his whole body spasmed violently.

Pidge appeared beside them both in an instant, hands fluttering and hovering as she appeared as much at a loss for what to do as Shiro felt.

“What’s wrong with him?!”

Shiro shook his head. “I don’t—I don’t know!” He looked up, all but flinching when Coran was suddenly there reaching his arms under Lance’s shoulders. Shiro and Pidge helped him scoot Lance out from between the chairs with some difficulty, giving Coran more room to work.

Behind them, there was the scrape of chairs, and Shiro tore his eyes away from the gruesome sight. While Allura and Keith were on their feet, frozen and horrified, Hunk reached across Shiro’s empty chair for the discarded cup, a mix of dread and fury on his face. He needed only to look inside the glass before his face darkened, and Shiro’s stomach lurched. He turned to level a glare at the host of the Keemani delegation, who watched the whole scene with almost flippant disinterest.

“What have you done?” he growled, rising to his feet and drawing himself to his full height. His hand whirred from the tension he felt, and he only just held back from activating it fully. “What did you do to him?!”

The host sighed, acting long-suffering as if _inconvenienced_ by the fact that there was someone suffocating to death on his courtroom floor. “It’s not what we did to him, but what he did to himself,” he replied with a roll of his eyes. “A glutton if I’ve ever seen one, gulping down that sanghari like a Mulgo out of water.”

Coran stiffened behind him, and Allura clapped a horrified hand to her mouth. “Sangh—how _dare you_?!”

The host continued like he heard nothing, shrugging a pointed shoulder slightly. “It’s a pity that things did not go according to plan… still, a Paladin of Voltron will reap a handsome bounty, nonetheless.”

And then the host leapt across the table, a sword drawn in the blink of an eye. Shiro didn’t even have time to react—but he didn’t have to. Before he could even get in arm’s reach of Lance, Allura pommeled the great fool in the face with a staff Shiro hadn’t seen her draw. Beside her, Keith drew his bayard and in one fell swoop, the Keemani to his right lost a hand before they could reach for the dagger at their hip.

“Get Lance to the Castle!” Allura commanded, whipping her staff around as the host turned to face her. The hesitation must have shown on his face, because Keith scowled at him from where he’d shoved his way through two Keemani.

“We’ll take care of these goons and catch up with you. Now _go_!”

Shiro didn’t need to be told twice. Turning back, his heart stuttered when he saw that Lance’s seizing had all but ceased. Save for the occasional hiccupping twitches he gave in his pitiful attempts to draw in air, he was eerily still. He scooped Lance up, hands under his shoulders and his knees. Lance’s head lolled as he was lifted, his body limp and heavy.

Body. Shiro shuddered, refusing to linger on that thought as they ran.

Hunk stayed behind, covering their escape as Coran and Pidge followed close at his heels. Shiro kept a worried eye on Lance, his face quickly turning a color the shade of ash and the seconds between feeble breaths growing longer and longer. His eyes had fallen shut, but Shiro didn’t know if he found that more or less unnerving than the wild, panicked look Lance had before. He shifted Lance in his arms until his head rested, safely cradled, against his chest.

It was simultaneously the longest and shortest sprint of Shiro’s life. Every step felt like a mile, and yet it seemed like he’d only blinked before the Castle loomed over them. Once they crossed the threshold of the Castle, Coran took the lead, tearing paces ahead of them into the infirmary. 

“Put him on the bed there, quickly,” Coran ordered. Shiro blanched.

“He needs a pod,” he protested, but Coran shook his head, rummaging frantically through cabinets.

“The pods won’t help him, not until we get that sanghari out of his system. Putting him in now will only preserve the toxin and prolong his suffering.” Abandoning that cabinet, Coran rushed across the room to a set of drawers and started turning them out one by one in a flurry.

“Shiro,” Pidge called, her voice faint. “Shiro, he’s not breathing!” 

Shiro sucked in a sharp gasp. Sure enough, Lance’s little breaths had ceased. He cursed, moving to the stiff cot and laying Lance down as gently as he could manage. “Help me get his armor off!” Pidge scrabbled for the fastenings while Shiro thrust his human fingers against Lance’s neck, searching for a pulse. 

There was none. He cursed again.

As soon as Pidge removed the chest plate, Shiro pushed her hands aside and hopped up on the bed. He straddled Lance and began chest compressions, metal hand over flesh hand, counting under his breath. Pidge tilted Lance’s chin back and prepared to give him rescue breaths.

“Don’t!”

Both Shiro and Pidge flinched, Shiro losing count as their heads snapped up to Coran. His eyes were frenetic, wide and terrified. He quickly reached into one of the open drawers, pulling out a water pouch.

“Rinse out his mouth first. Any trace of the sanghari will make you ill, too.” His voice was tight as he tossed it, and Pidge caught it with fumbling hands. 

“What exactly _is_ this stuff, Coran?” Pidge asked desperately, shaking fingers working the cap off the water pouch as Shiro resumed compressions. She carefully turned Lance’s head to the side, letting the water run past his lips instead of down his throat. Coran was still tearing the infirmary apart, looking for something. 

“Sanghari is the colloquial term for it—it is a supremely toxic chemical compound, very deadly if inhaled or ingested,” he said distractedly. “I believe the closest comparable thing from your Earth would be a hydrocyanic salt of some variety.” 

The water pouch slipped from Pidge’s hands. “ _Cyanide_?!” she spluttered, voice strangled. “That—that can’t be right. Cyanide kills almost instantly. Like, within minutes. He drank the damn stuff _hours_ before he started showing symptoms!”

There were a hundred thoughts racing though Shiro’s head at this revelation, but he couldn’t let himself dwell on them. Not when Lance still couldn’t breathe, not while his heart still did not beat. He leaned down and gave Lance a couple of rescue breaths himself, traces of poison be damned. One breath, then another. Lance’s chest rose and sank with them, then stilled once more.

“Come on, Lance, stay with us,” Shiro muttered, sitting back up and starting another round of compressions. Conversation about the poison dropped, Pidge took her position again and gave the rescue breaths when Shiro paused. “Damn it all, _breathe_ , Lance. Stay with us. _Please_.”

There was a cry of desperate triumph as Coran found whatever it was he was searching for, frantic footsteps as he all but leapt across the room to them. In his hands was a small vial, filled to the brim with a black, viscous concoction that reminded Shiro of engine oil.

It almost seemed too good to be true. He eyed the vial warily. 

“Is that an antidote?” he asked. Coran did not answer immediately; instead, he uncorked the vial and tilted its contents into Lance’s mouth without a word.

“Coran?” Pidge pressed, a dreadful look on her face as her eyes followed Coran’s hands. “Is that the antidote?”

Coran’s lips settled in a grim line as he held Lance’s jaw firmly shut, massaging his throat to make the liquid go down. “There is no antidote for sanghari,” he murmured. Shiro’s heart sank.

“Then what is—?”

“This is dokshikka,” Coran said succinctly, fingers tightening around the now empty vial. “In human words, it is called ‘the venom eater.’” 

Pidge stared with wide eyes, even as Shiro hissed incredulously, “You’re giving him another poison?!” 

A pained look settled on Coran’s face. “Sometimes you must fight fire with fire, my boy. This is the only way.” He waved vaguely at Shiro, cutting off whatever protest he had. “I will explain in greater detail, but we must get his heart started again if we’re to have any hope that this will work.”

Shiro didn’t like it, but he nodded tightly, moving into compressions again. Coran took over for the rescue breaths, not wanting to expose Pidge to whatever side effects dokshikka caused. Instead, Pidge wrung her hands in anguish, her eyes bright with unshed tears behind her glasses.

“Please,” she whimpered, and said nothing more. 

It’d been several minutes, and still several more rounds more of compressions, when Shiro began to lose hope. “It’s been so long,” he choked, even as he continued pumping Lance’s chest. “Come back to us, Lance.” Coran bent down for another rescue breath.

As if hearing Shiro’s pleas, a tiny shudder coursed through Lance, the slightest of inhales. Then another, and another. Shiro loosed a surprised noise, his fingers scrabbling for Lance’s pulse once more. And there it was—thready and weak, but the thrum of Lance’s heart beat under Shiro’s touch. A relieved, aborted sob slipped past his lips, and he nodded to Coran and Pidge.

“Oh thank God,” Pidge breathed, sagging in relief. She scooted aside to let Shiro down, and Coran moved to get Lance laying on his side in the recovery position to ease his raspy breathing. Even in unconsciousness, Lance’s brow remained screwed up in pain, never once relaxing.

“We are fortunate,” Coran said softly, brushing the bangs back from Lance’s face, “that we administered the dokshikka in time. I do not doubt that had we taken even a few dobashes longer, it would have been too late.”

“You said it wasn’t an antidote,” Shiro said slowly. He stared, fixated, at the rise and fall of Lance’s chest, half-convinced that it would cease again if he tore his eyes away. “So what exactly _does_ it do?”

“Exactly what the name implies,” Coran answered. He reached for a handheld scanner from where it hung on its cradle near the pods, tapping in a few keys as he began to run diagnostics now that Lance wasn’t in immediate danger. “It consumes most poisons and toxins in the known universe." 

“But it’s a poison itself, isn’t it? If not an antidote?” said Pidge, unable to help her curiosity even at a time such as this.

“A chemical,” Coran corrected, “but in essence, yes. Dokshikka by itself is not inherently toxic; rather, it is reactionary to whichever poison it combats. It is an… extraordinarily unpleasant process. For that reason, we Alteans only ever used it in cases of extreme emergency as a last resort, in absence of a proper antidote.”

Dread lurched up somewhere near Shiro’s throat. “Unpleasant, how?”

Coran’s hands stilled on the scanner. He did not meet Shiro’s eyes when he spoke at last. “It will cause Lance excruciating pain as it consumes the venom inside of him. He will almost certainly have a dangerously high fever, for starters. He will see things that are not there, will beg to be given water. You absolutely _must not_ —dokshikka is highly soluble and will not work properly if he is given anything to drink.”

Shiro’s heart sank the longer Coran went on, but his eyebrows shot into his hairline at the last bit. “But—!”

“We will administer fluids intravenously to ensure he stays hydrated,” Coran interrupted, looking every bit as exhausted as Shiro felt. “And we must keep him cool, or else the fever will cause damage to his brain. Only once we are sure the sanghari has been completely consumed will it be safe for us to put him in a pod.”

They stood there in silence for a long moment after that, save for the muted beeping of the scanner as Coran conducted his diagnostics and Lance’s labored breathing.

“Why would anyone do such a thing to him?” Pidge whispered, her voice warbled. “Why him, out of all of us?”

Guilt churned in the pit of Shiro’s stomach. In hindsight, it became crystal clear what Lance had done—he’d known from the start that there was something wrong with the drink. Or he’d suspected, at least, and switched them intentionally. And Shiro had missed it, and instead had been annoyed with Lance for it.

He was so _stupid._

“It wasn’t supposed to be him,” he admitted. Coran and Pidge both looked up at him in surprise. “That glass was mine. He—he said he didn’t like his own and switched them.”

Coran hummed thoughtfully. He scrolled through some numbers on his tablet. “The amount of sanghari he ingested is abnormally high, even for a deliberate poisoning. I doubt our would-be assassins wanted the effects to make themselves known in the midst of our meeting.” 

“They would have wanted to wait until they could get me alone, is what you’re saying.” 

“I’m afraid so,” said Coran, his eyes sad. “Contrary to what Number Five assumed earlier, sanghari is a slow killer. That Lance’s symptoms escalated so drastically, in so short a time… I have to assume your approximate body weight was accounted for, not his.” 

“‘A handsome bounty,’” Pidge said suddenly, realization and fury flashing in her eyes. “They would’ve turned Shiro over to the Galra, dead or alive. And they almost _did_ get Lance.” She shuddered, as if the mere thought alone made her ill.

Shiro clenched his fists tightly at his side. None of this was okay. That someone would try to poison him for a bounty, that he missed all the signs of something amiss, that Lance would willingly take a drink in his stead, knowing it was likely contaminated… did Lance wish to protect him that badly? Or worse yet, did Lance think himself _expendable_?

The thought scared Shiro to death.

“How…” he started, taking a stuttering breath to steady himself. He could not draw his eyes away from Lance’s prone form. Could not convince himself this wasn’t all his fault. “How long will the dokshikka take to clear him out?” 

“It’s hard to say,” Coran murmured. “Half a movement, at the very least. He will need to move past the fever stage before I can say with certainty.”

Three days, then, maybe four. Shiro nodded tersely, drawing up a chair from the other side of the room and plopping down next to Lance.

It was going to be a long few days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp.... this ran away from me. again. guess there's gonna be a part 3... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
